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Hodgman has known politics since he ran around the corridors of Old Parliament House in Canberra as a child, when his late father, Michael, was the Fraser government's minister for territories.

Should Hodgman win on Saturday, he would assume the leadership in the 99th year of the family's collective state and federal parliamentary service.

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His great-great-great uncle Thomas began in Tasmania's House of Assembly in 1900. His grandfather Bill was in State Parliament for 21 years; Michael followed with long state and federal careers, and Will's uncle Peter also served.

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Now Hodgman's lessons in life - from sheep drenching to parliamentary number counting - appear set to pay off. After 16 years of Labor government in Tasmania, the last four in alliance with the Greens, Tasmanians are close to making a Hodgman their premier for the first time.

Hodgman's Liberals have been polling strongly for over two years. It's likely that from the five multi-member electorates, they will win three seats each in the island's northern electorates of Bass and Braddon as well as the rural central electorate of Lyons. Another two seats in each of the southern electorates, Denison and Franklin, and they have a majority.

This election comes at a critical time for Tasmania. Despite its profile today as a natural wonder, and arts hub led by the MONA Gallery phenomenon, the island's economic and social indicators again lag behind other states.

Following job losses in manufacturing, the full-time unemployment rate peaked last August at 8.6 per cent, or nearly 3 per cent above the national average.

Tasmania also has the country's lowest weekly wage of $1280, compared with a national average of $1450, according to the ABS. On the education front, it's a chronic failure on the critical future indicator of year 12 education retention rates, which sits at just 67 per cent.

In government since 1998, Labor's support has dwindled over the past decade, and in 2010 a 10-10-5 result gave it power after it formed an alliance with the Greens.

Hodgman has found plenty of space to campaign for an alternative. He is promising a return to the stability of majority government, fiscal conservatism to deal with growing state debt, and the revival of traditional industries such as forestry.

Premier Lara Giddings says Hodgman won't stand up to to Prime Minister Tony Abbott and that he will roll over on watershed changes such as the NBN, where the state has lost its first-mover advantage.

Tasmania was to be the first state to be completely NBN, giving it an advantage over other states in drawing business and providing services. But delays meant that instead of having the total coverage initially promised by April 2014, it now has about 10 per cent coverage, according to the lobby group Digital Tasmania.

''Tasmanians can't count on him to stand up to protect Tasmania's GST share either,'' she says.

But the Greens leader, Nick McKim, says voters should make him opposition leader, because he is best suited to deal with a ''hard right'' Liberal future.

When Will Hodgman became Opposition Leader in 2006, his first challenge was to differentiate himself from his father in the minds of Tasmanians.

''People still call me Young Will,'' he quipped recently. ''I'm 44!''

But while Hodgman senior campaigned in a pinstripe suit, Will hits the trail in blue chinos and checked shirt. His father might have been a flag-waving monarchist, but the younger is a republican.

They do have in common training as lawyers. Michael was known for rousing juries in his defence of the colourful; Will spent time in England prosecuting cases of child abuse and neglect.

During the election campaign no clearer evidence of the stark differences between them emerged than when Will decided to step into a boxing ring for charity.

Michael was an enthusiastic and successful amateur pugilist in his youth, undefeated after 17 fights. Will had never boxed before he made a doomed exhibition appearance last month at the Bridgewater Police and Citizens Youth Club.

Giving away 25 kilograms in weight and several centimetres of reach to Mick Newell, a former My Kitchen Rules contestant, Hodgman took a beating through three rounds but still kept his feet. Afterwards, he swore off the fight game forever.

Tasmania's often raucous House of Assembly offered more familiar sport. Father and son sat together on opposition leather for four years after Michael shifted to state politics.

But Will missed his first chance at the premiership in the 2010 election when the final result left the Greens with the balance of power.

Hodgman was relying on an ALP pre-election promise that in a tie, government should go to the party with the greatest popular vote - in this case the Liberals. Labor's David Bartlett reneged and formed government with the Greens and gave them two ministerial positions.

With Tasmania's indicators heading downwards in 2011, Bartlett resigned the premiership for family reasons and Lara Giddings became premier at the age of 38.

Engaging off-camera, the first Tasmanian female premier suffered, like former prime minister Julia Gillard, from harsh judgment in the electorate. Her popularity rating has bounced between 18 and 25 per cent and under her leadership the ALP vote has languished at 23-28 per cent.

In late 2013, as this election approached, Labor backbencher Brenton Best openly revolted, demanding Giddings break the politically damaging alliance with the Greens or resign. She held out until January before sacking Greens ministers Nick McKim from the Education portfolio and Community Services' Cassy O'Connor, and calling the election.

As Best continued his personal attacks on Giddings, including a recent Facebook post in which he said the way to revive Tasmania's economy was to ''get rid of La La'', the Liberals made the most of it, claiming Labor was in disarray. But the underlying message in Best's campaign is the need for the party to retain ''traditional Labor values''. In this he is not alone.

Secretary of the Australian Workers Union Paul Howes went to Hobart to launch the campaign of grizzled former Forestry Tasmania chief executive Bob Gordon, who said he would not stand while the Greens were part of government.

Howes endorsed that. ''I don't think it's in the interests of the Labor Party or the union movement to enter into formal alliances with the Greens,'' Howes said. ''Labor is at its best when it's standing on its own two feet, battling out for the issues that it's done so well for 122 years.''

This time Labor appears to be in a tough battle with its former alliance partners.

The idea that the Greens could win as many seats as the ALP was, until recently, what election watcher Bonham called ''an almost totally crazy beast from outer space''. But polling suggests there is an outside chance that the Greens could win as many, or more, seats than the ALP through the distribution of preferences.

Polling also shows a seat in the conservative north-west electorate of Braddon within grasp of the Palmer United Party, which is making a big effort in Tasmania on the heels of Senator-elect Jacqui Lambie's success at the federal election.

The Palmer factor weighs heavily on Hodgman as he is seeking a clear victory. ''Certainly it's a threat to majority government,'' he says. ''The PUP are obviously campaigning very heavily from their base in Queensland.''

But that is not the only thing that's coming from the Sunshine State. Hodgman's Liberals have borrowed heavily from LNP Premier Campbell Newman's campaign book.

Ahead of his election, Newman presented an eight-page document titled ''First 100 Days Action Plan''. Hodgman recently unveiled his eight-page ''First 100 Days Implementation Plan'' with the same First Day, First Week, First 30 Days chapter headings.

Newman promised on the first day to ''issue a whole-of-government 4 per cent unemployment target'' as the government's ''underpinning policy principle''. Hodgman said in the first week he would ''issue a whole-of-government'' directive to reduce unemployment to the national average as the government's ''number one priority''. The similarities don't end there.

Like Newman, Hodgman has spoken of a ''20 per cent'' cut to green and red tape, promised the Liberals would open up Tasmanian national parks to ''sensible'' development, and make law and order a priority.

But while in Brisbane the flagship policy was tougher sentences for serious crime, in Tasmania Hodgman's first campaign policy is for ''a crackdown on forest protest''.

This would start with fines of $10,000 for a first offence of ''invading or impeding access to a workplace'', and a mandatory three months' jail for a second offence.

The timber industry now provides fewer than half the number of direct jobs in Tasmania that tourism does, but the fight over forests is nevertheless highly charged.

Long before Prime Minister Tony Abbott called the timber industry ''ultimate conservationists'', the Tasmanian Liberals hung out their colours.

The federal bid to wind back World Heritage listing from 74,000 hectares of Tasmania's most contentious forest and hand it over to the loggers is being driven not by Environment Minister Greg Hunt, but by Tasmanian Senator Richard Colbeck, the parliamentary secretary for agriculture.

It threatens to force activists back into the old-growth forests for just the kind of confrontation Hodgman's anti-protest laws are designed to deal with.

In the final days of the campaign, Will Hodgman stood in another remnant of old Tasmania to talk about his vision of the new.

He strolled around what was until recently the editorial floor of The Mercury newspaper, an Art Deco-fronted office building being recycled into a restaurant and arts hub.

Under his 100 Days Plan, a priority of a Hodgman government would be to meet in its first week with ''timber industry representatives to commence our plan to rebuild the forestry industry''.

He was asked if he would meet green groups too, but showed little interest in that. ''Our plan focuses on growing the industry … not appeasing environmentalists,'' he said. ''That doesn't work.''

A recent EMRS poll showed that 92 per cent of Tasmanians want an end to the forests conflict, and two-thirds support the existing peace deal. Approved in 2012, this provides for compensation for and restructuring of logging companies, as well as the maintenance of the World Heritage listing that the Abbott government is now winding back.

It was put to Hodgman that the poll showed the majority of Tasmanians did not back the Liberals' forestry plan.

''Well, Tasmanians can have their say in just a matter of days,'' he said. As of tomorrow, that day has come.